Kira, Knight of Orb
by Knightmare Gundam of Ni
Summary: In the Cosmic Era, mankind has once again fallen into war and chaos. And in the midst of this, a small nation will rise to power, championed by a Knight named Kira Yamato...
1. Phase 00: Prologue

Gundam Seed: Kira, Knight of Orb

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my Original Characters and my Original Mecha Designs

Phase 00: Prologue

– The Doomed –

**Mendel Colony, Lagrange 4  
0622 GMT, May 20, 55 CE  
**

It was a massacre. Ever since the first explosion twenty-two minutes ago, Mendel Colony's security forces found themselves overwhelmed by the invading force. The disparity of forces was highly obvious, as the security forces had mere normal space suits, civilian-grade sub-machine guns loaded with low-velocity rounds, and about as much combat experience as the average mall cop. The invaders, meanwhile, wore military-grade Semi-Powered Combat Armor, were armed with military-grade carbines loaded with 'Talon' self-fragmenting rounds and it was highly apparent they had training in close-quarters combat.

They made effective use of cover, despite the fact that they could literally walk right into a hail of the security forces' bullets and come out with little more than a scratch on the urban-camo paint on their armor, covering each other with suppressing fire and leap-frogging their way through the corridors. Each time they came to a door led towards more security forces, they tossed in either a flashbang or smoke grenade, and either piled out and started firing, or used the distraction to find another way around, if applicable, using no clear discernible pattern as to which action they took.

In their wake, they left bloody walls and shredded corpses. Talon rounds, illegal since the adoption of the Yggdrasil Accords more than forty years ago, broke under stress after piercing the skin of a target, specifically shaped to split into anywhere from three to nine shards of eviscerating lead and copper alloys, slicing open pretty much anything that got in their way. Veins, arteries, nerves, muscles and internal organs were cut apart, causing internal bleeding and shock that often enough killed the target outright.

All in all, it was a pure, simple massacre. Every so often, when the intruders came across a sector that security had been unable to reach or evacuate and encountered the civilians; scientists of various biological fields, they gunned them down on the spot, not even allowing a plea of mercy before bullets sliced through the researchers' flesh.

This pattern continued, unabated, up to the final, most secure and entrenched sector of the colony. Contrary to common sense and belief, it wasn't the colony control center. Rather, it was the lab of the premier scientist of the colony, one Ulen Hibiki, including his assistants' work-rooms and quarters as well as the chambers of him and his wife, Via.

Different from the rest of the colony, the hallways leading to this room were separated by thick metal bulkheads. The invaders were prepared for this obstacle. All of them, numbering thirty-three, gathered in the corridors preceding the first bulkhead blocking entry into the Hibiki's sector. Two of them attached a dark, compact wire to it using strips of a strange, thin and silvery tape, around an area large enough for three of them to walk through without difficulty. After they were done, one of them removed a detonator and triggered it, the tape igniting in a bright blue-white flash that burned through the metal in seconds, allowing the lead breacher to kick it in and storm through the opening.

Almost immediately, gunfire sounded, and the first of the assailants' casualties bled, tungsten-alloy-tipped bullets piercing through titanium-alloy and dilatant colloids intended to halt bullets and absorb kinetic impacts, to imbed themselves in the body of the intruder wearing the armor, killing him within seconds. Back behind the bulkhead, the apparent leader of the invading force shook his head at his underling's recklessness and stupidity.

Now, two of the invaders again stepped up, this time throwing in a variant of smoke grenades and another, special kind of explosive a second after. Filled with metallic shavings as well as the normal smoke-producing chemicals, these acted somewhat similar to the chaff thrown off by combat aircraft when targeted by missiles. The other explosive, meanwhile, was a long-term, relatively low-temperature incendiary.

Combined, these served to distract the automated turrets mounted on both the ceiling and floor from the entrance of the actual intruders, who made short work of the defenses.

And thus, another pattern came about, the experienced intruders plowing through the defenses only somewhat more slowly than their previous progress. They dismantled the last of the turrets an hour after the bulkheads first came up in their path.

Behind them was a door. It was a fairly simple one that slid into the wall when activated, guarded now only by a simple coded keypad.

Leaving all but four of his soldiers behind to act as a rearguard, the leader of the force simply walked up to the door and punched in a code that at one point only three people had known, before his organization's various spies and hackers managed to obtain it.

The door beeped, and slid smoothly, silently into the wall.

Behind were the two targets.

It was simple and quick.

"For the preservation of our pure and blue world." The leader intoned blandly, the speakers in his armor's helmet broadcasting his voice clearly so the two could hear him.

The blond man, Ulen Hibiki, snarled at the leader and opened his mouth. What for, no one would ever know, for the leader simply drew his sidearm, a .45-caliber handgun, and shot him in the head.

The brown-haired woman, Via Hibiki, however, simply stared calmly at him. It was unnerving, and would have made the man hesitate if he had any hint of emotions left. Instead, he simply shot her too, noting her strange smirk as an oddity that was dismissed after a split second's consideration.

The leader was about to turn back and order his subordinates' to carry out the last part of their mission, when rapid cracks started sounding.

– The Twin Commanders –

Outside, the invaders struggled to deal with their unexpected assailants. Ironically enough, they found themselves in the positions their own opposition were in merely hours ago.

Their armor did not protect them from their enemy. Whatever their weapons or ammunition, it pierced through the invaders' armor as easily as their own Talon bullets had passed through the security forces' clothes and skin.

Their weapons did not harm their enemy. The same Talon rounds that had been previously so effective merely shattered against the armor of the assailants.

And to add insult to injury, there were only two of them.

One was suited up in a hulking armor, obviously some kind of true powered armor prototype or something rather than the semi-powered production models the invaders wore. Each piece was a black, light-absorbing solid metal slab, with scale-like patterns on its surface, and whatever gaps they didn't cover showed a dark gray mass of fibrous material that was no more penetrable than the black pieces to the intruders' ammunition. The helmet, rather than being a simply effective affair, was artistically crafted in the image of a human skull, with eye-sockets glinting with embedded cameras. This one held a rifle that sounded a simple supersonic crack with every bullet fired, no normal gunshot that indicated the presence of gunpowder in any form, and had a rather huge handgun somehow attached to his hip. Parts of the armor slabs on the thighs and upper arms had spare magazines for the rifle attached in the same way the handgun was.

The other, lagging slightly behind the brute, was dressed in what was obviously a lighter and more main-stream version, perhaps intended for mass-production, the black armor pieces being both smaller and more numerous, with more gaps but also more flexibility, showing more of the dark gray under-material. The helmet wasn't a standard combat model however, being an all-encompassing oval orb that came up into a sort of crest at the back of the top of it, only a few small strips of off-color glass showing the mini-camera arrays that allowed the wearer to see. As with the brute, this one's upper arm and thigh plates had spare magazines somehow attached to them.  
A compact weapon, a bullpup sub-machine gun with the same audio characteristics as the big attacker's rifle, was the main weapon used by the lighter-armored attacker, a handgun much smaller than the big brute's adorning his hip.

They worked in concert, the bigger one taking carefully aimed shots, sometimes firing bursts, at opportune targets while the smaller one sprayed indiscriminately in the direction of those still taking cover around corners. With the proven lethality of their weapons, it proved effective, the highly accurate shots of the brute's rifle rarely missing a target, often splattering the intruders' brains inside their helmets, while the small one's suppressive fire forced the intruders to keep their heads down, or suffer a couple dozen bullet wounds.

By now, it was apparent that the aggressor's weapons had enormous magazine capacity, considering how after two minutes of nearly non-stop combat, neither of the pair had yet to reload. Unbeknownst to the intruders however, the smaller one's SMG, despite having a much larger magazine capacity than the brute's rifle, was running low on ammunition due to the constant firing.

"Reloading." He called out, using the encrypted radio.

"Yeah sure, just get on with it Tei." The brute, Taka grumbled back. "I've got a good half-magazine left, shouldn't be too much trouble." In response, Tei ducked behind Taka's large, heavily armored form after firing off the last of his magazine, taking out the expended clip and bolting it onto a space on his thigh before retrieving a full magazine from the slot above that, sliding it into the SMG and chambering a round before slipping back out and spraying two overconfident enemies that slipped out when Taka's attention was elsewhere.

With Taka reloading while the remaining targets cowered, this allowed the duo to continue their onslaught, cutting their way through the rest of the intruders within a minute.

While the invaders' attack merely left corpses, Taka and Tei's assault left behind smoldering bullet holes in the metal walls as well as the dead bodies of the invading force. Most of the torn holes were from Tei's generous automatic fire, although there were one or two deep gouges from when Taka fired an overcharged single shot that penetrated right through a target ad his armor.

Now, only five remained. The leader of the invaders, and his chosen four subordinates.

They attacked when Taka stepped through the door, slamming his rifle into the wall and grabbing him in a hold intended to bring the heavier trooper to the ground under the other soldier's weight. It didn't work, Taka already counteracting by shifting his body and stomping on the invader's foot, heavy boot combined with synthetic hyper-dense musculature crushing both the inferior armor and the soldier's bones before Taka dropped his rifle and drew his knife, the eight-inch black-spined blade with its glittering transparent edge slicing through the semi-powered combat armor like it was cloth, embedding itself into the man's aorta.

As Taka was dealing with his two attackers, Tei was already firing on the other two, magnetically-accelerated rounds puncturing one's upper torso. The other one, slipping by Taka, simply punched Tei in the head. It wasn't quite as effective as he'd hoped, Tei simply grabbing the fist before his assailant could retract it and breaking the wrist with a single jerk of his hand. Then, it was a simple matter to pepper his attacker's abdomen with bullets.

Taka gave a twist of his knife before pulling it out and shoving the dying man to the side, turning more fully to face his last attacker, who grabbed a hand grenade from his belt. Taka just snorted in his helmet, reaching out and crushing his opponent's fist in his gauntlet and breaking the enemy's fingers around the grenade before burying his knife into the man's forehead.

Their attackers dealt with, the two armored men turned to face the last of the invaders, the commander standing in front of Ulen and Via's corpses. He held a detonator, and they could see several blocks of plastic explosives, wired with receivers, placed at several points around the chamber.

"You know that's useless, right?" Tei spoke up. "We've had radio jammers in place ever since we started killing your men." The commander hesitated, his thumb hovering over the detonator's button.

Enough of an opening for Taka to swiftly draw and fire his handgun, a 3mm hypersonic round punching through the commander's helmet and skull to splatter the innards of his cranium all over the floor before the fanatic called Tei's bluff.

"Fucking bastard!" Taka spat, holstering his sidearm and rushing to Via's body, Tei close behind. Kneeling by her corpse, he made to turn her onto her back, before stopping and just dropping his hands. "Damn him...and damn you Tei! Via was supposed to be safe with this asshole!" He growled, gesturing angrily at Ulen. "That's why I let her go, even after what happened to Caridad!"

"I'm sorry." Tei said, stepping around Taka. "I had hoped that everything we'd done before, combined with her marrying Ulen would have protected her...But it appears I was wrong. Even after so long, he's still rather effective in choosing his pawns." Tei moved over to Ulen, when there was a sound.

Crying.

Taka stood up, he and Tei frowning under their helmets and sweeping the room, noting its features for the first time.

To the right, consoles and screens lined the wall, with two screens still active: One showing a room full of large spherical machines large enough to house an average-sized man and one that was decorated in a way stereotypical of baby boy's rooms, occupied by a cradle.

"Is that-"

"Looks like it." Tei cut Taka off, moving to the consoles under each screen and rapidly hacking into the system. Within moments, he'd pulled up maps with each room highlighted, and nodded to Taka before the two moved off to their chosen destinations.

Half and hour later, they gather again in the room with the Hibiki's corpses, Taka cradling an infant while Tei leaned over it.

"Is that..."

"Yep. Their son. Kira Hibiki." Taka answered.

"So the family isn't dead yet." Tei mused, waggling his fingers above the baby's wide purple eyes.

"Looks like it." Taka agreed. "Still, what are we going to do now? There's no one left we can trust." Tei paused at that, head inclining as he thought.

"There's Orb." He said, Taka stiffening at the mention of the nation. "I know you don't want to go there, but at this point we have no choice. He's going to be looking for us after this incident, and we have resources in Orb that we can exploit. And besides, we can't raise Kira the way we've been living up to now. He's going to need a stable environment, and we're not exactly the best choices for father figures."

"We're not going to just hand him off to someone!" Taka snapped. "Not after this!"

"I know, I know." Tei placated. "We'll still raise him, our little nephew, and we'll teach him how to survive in this world...although I fear for his mental state with us looking after him." Taka snorted at that. "We're going to need plausible identities though..."

"But I like my name!"

"Not that, these names should be safe. We haven't used them in public persona yet, but we still need a surname..." The two paused, thinking.

"What about that guy Caridad was sweet on? Yamato?"

"Yamato..." Tei mused. "Yes, that could work. Somewhat generic-sounding these days, and it won't be out of place in Orb...very well then." With that, the two reached up and removed their helmets, black and white hair falling to frame Tei and Taka's faces before two bright purple eyes of an infant locked with the darker violet of the older men.

"Meet your uncles Tei and Taka...Kira Yamato..."

– The Author –

And I'm back!

**(And so am I bitches!)**

What the- What are you doing here K'GoN! I banished you to the deepest, darkest corners of my mind!

**(Dumbass, I was **_**born**_** in the deepest and darkest corners of your mind - and a for the record, it's absolutely disgusting down there, especially the part where you keep your Mecha Musume fantasies - So of course I'd know my way out!)**

Dammit, I was at least hoping you'd stay down there for another couple of years, until I could get some psychiatric help.

**(Before or after they lock you up and throw away the key? Anyway, watching Jeff Dunham probably didn't help at all.)**

Wait, so you're like my Peanut?

**(Yes, and to add context to the reference, Peanut is the purple monkey puppet with the self-referential humor)**

Moron, you should know not to explain the joke, since I'm fairly certain TV Tropes is down there too. Anyway, on to business, it's back to the main course for me, after several forays into other realms of fanfiction. Yes, I'm back into writing Gundam people!

**(Wow, you're cruel. Giving those poor deprived folk a taste of your writing...actually, I take that back. You're probably doing them a mercy, ending those premature fantasies right there.)**

What? No, I'm not giving up on the Devil of Zero or Scorpion's Masterpiece! However, they are admittedly not going to update quite as much as before -

**(Which wasn't much at all, by the way.**)

- Shut up - but I think I've made it clear that Gundam and by association other Mecha stories are my main priorities -

**(No you haven't.)**

So I...what?

**(You haven't made any mention of any sort of priorities in any story you've posted. At all.)**

Well, of course I...Surely I've...I haven't, have I?

**(Nope.)**

Crap. Well, anyway, just to clear it up, in the list of priorities, Gundam in all its forms is at the very top, followed by other Mecha/Robot works (Code Geass, Transformers, Armored Core, Battletech...) And then the rest of the pile is pretty much ordered by total reviews and/or how I'm feeling about them.

**(Truly, your muse is a flighty one...which is a bit punny, considering she's a pin-up of Wing Zero EW Version's Mecha Musume taped next to your desk...)**

*cough-shut-up-cough* So, as of now my prime focus is on this new story here, Kira, Knight of Orb (Formerly titled Kira, Soldier of Orb - it seems to flow better this way), which can be boiled down to a rather drastic rewrite of Killer's Realm. Now, usually, I post both the prologue and the first chapter within two days, but there's been some problems with Phase 01 -

**( - Namely, the buying of Armored Core V and the release of Diablo III - )**

- So that's probably going to be posted around Monday -

**( - Unless the asshole gets lazy again - or, god forbid, gets a job! - )**

To summate: New Story! **(Again)** Original Mecha! **(Again)** Beta'd by Maderfole! **(Aga - wait, what? How the hell did you get him to beta this crap?)**

...Um...

**(...It's pity, isn't it?)**

...

**(And the last seven hundred words or so weren't in the draft you sent him, were they?)**

...No?

**(...You are a sad, sad, fat man.**

**Anyway fleshlings, Read and Review! Or I KILL YOU!)**

Please don't threaten the readers.

Knightmare Gundam of Ni


	2. Phase 01: Act of War

Gundam Seed: Kira, Knight of Orb

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my Original Characters and my Original Mecha Designs

Phase 01: Act of War

Cosmic Era. It began with the end of the Anno Domini calendar in 2713, the year that the Reconstruction War officially ended. The Reconstruction War, a conflict that engulfed the lives of an entire generation of humanity, was comparatively puny compared to the nearly three hundred years of constant warfare that engulfed the Earth prior to it, an era of conflict that reduced the nations of the world to pockets of humanity, the largest being city-states scattered across the globe on every continent. It's not certain how much was lost during this era, or what might have come about if there had been peace instead of war.

What is certain is that on the year 2666, several city-states, one after the other, decided to recreate the continent-spanning countries of the time prior to the three-century chaos. First, the city-state of Atlantic City on the eastern coast of North America began a war of conquest heading west. Next, the state of Xīnshēng allied with Ottsa City to unite the disparate nations of Eurasia. Similar events occur all over the world, in Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia, and Scandinavia. In each respective proto-nation's greed, these individual conflicts eventually erupted onto the global stage, creating the war that historians would label the 'Reconstruction War' in the years afterwards. It raged for decades, up to the year 2710, when it merely…petered out, like a fire with no fuel. None are sure of the whys and wherefores, but an unofficial and uneasy peace settled over the world, shortly after the final battles in South America, Africa, and Eurasia. After three years of this, the nations of the world gathered, and signed what would be called the Yggdrasil Accords, after the international space station that would go up in the year 2722 AD, or, Cosmic Era Year 9.

From then on, it seemed that humanity would continue in peace.

Then, in CE 15, with the completion and subsequent flight of the interplanetary exploration ship Tsiolkovsky, one of the Atlantic Federation's heroes of the Reconstruction War, George Glenn; a man of preternatural talent, revealed the source of his capability: He was a 'Coordinator', a human genetically altered within the womb to have greater natural potential than naturally-born humans, capable of greater intelligence, strength, speed, and agility; born with greater resistance to infection and disease, and generally engineered to be 'better' than normal people. With his infamous confession, Glenn also released technical data about the procedures used by the doctor to 'improve' him. This revelation and the subsequent wildfire spread of Coordinator technology throws the world into chaos.

In the name of environmental protection, the pressure group Blue Cosmos declared itself adamantly opposed to Coordinator technology a mere month after Glenn's Confession, with its members immediately starting to begin acts of petty vandalism and assault that slowly escalate as time passes. By CE 16, the group is larger than ever with new members, and is firebombing clinics that carry out Coordinator operations. That same year, an international conference is held to discuss the Coordinator controversy. A protocol on genetic modification is adopted, totally prohibiting the manipulation of human genes and shutting down all active Coordinator practices. Nonetheless, some wealthy individuals secretly have their children turned into Coordinators, paying off officials and hiring doctors.

In CE 22, the Tsiolkovsky reached its destination of Jupiter…and discovered something amazing. A fossil of an alien life-form. Yet again, George Glenn throws the world into chaos, as his superiors order him and his crew to bring the fossil back with him, returning to Earth seven years later. Glenn was confined upon arrival, along with the fossil newly dubbed 'Evidence 01'. In the years following his return, the Palestine Conference takes place, a gathering of religious figures to decide on the issue of Coordinators, but is unable to reach any conclusions, and their influence begins to wane. Tolerance for Coordinators spreads throughout the world, and the first Coordinator boom began. This same time period saw a great increase in space construction, with lunar bases and space colonies being rapidly constructed, the most notable being Orb's Heliopolis colony and the Mendel Colony of Lagrange 4.

After a year, Glenn is released to study Evidence 01 at Zodiac Station, a highly-advanced research facility built at Lagrange 5, eventually expanded into a full-size colony. Years pass, Zodiac Station growing ever-larger, but tensions begin to rise anew as the nations of Earth begin full-on militarization of space. In CE 38, Glenn starts a project to expand Zodiac Station into a group of colonies, funded by various nations and led by representatives of these sponsors. Almost concurrently, the first generation of Coordinator Boom Babies reach maturity, and their enhanced potential allow them to reach heights of skill that draw attention and criticism.

The first ten colonies of the new L5 Cluster, dubbed Production Location Ally on Nexus Technology, or PLANTs, are finished, and begin large-scale production of almost every product, excepting food, which the sponsor nations require them to import from Earth. As the PLANTs originally had a largely Coordinator workforce, they become the single most Coordinator-populated location in the Earth Sphere. This leads to terrorist attacks from Blue Cosmos and other extremist organizations, which the PLANTs are unable to fight off due to their lack of political autonomy and standing military, in turn leading to bitterness and heightened dissatisfaction among the burgeoning Coordinator population.

As a result, for the next decade, main leaders of the PLANTs Siegel Clyne and Patrick Zala work together to secure the new-born colonies' independence, forming the Zodiac Alliance. However, their efforts are repeatedly suppressed by the sponsor nations, and they're eventually forced underground. A series of events destabilizes the Earth Sphere further: first, George Glenn is assassinated, and then the Type S Influenza mutates, becoming far more virulent and deadly within a month and an epidemic occurs. Due to the rapid mutation and fatalities resulting, it's eventually suspected that the new Type S2 Influenza is artificial in origin, and Anti-Coordinator groups are quick to point fingers at the genetically augmented humans. Public opinion, aided by religious claims of the outbreak as an Act of God, turns quickly, and the Torino Protocols that restrict genetic engineering on Earth are adopted by most of the terrestrial nations. Even after the PLANTs research and implement a vaccine to Type S2, anti-Coordinator sentiments run high.

Tensions continue to ramp up, as the PLANTs expand and become major sources of the Earth nations' goods and energy, and suffer higher and higher quotas as a result. It all comes to a head in CE 68, when after a terrorist attack destroys part of the PLANTs energy production capacity and the Earth Nations refuse to relent in their quota, the PLANTs Supreme Council vote to make the L5 colony cluster independent, taking the name of Peoples Liberation Acting Nation of Technology in place of the old acronym. During this same period, the Zodiac Alliance, now the Zodiac Alliance of Freedom Treaty, or ZAFT, becomes the PLANTs' official military force.

The sponsor nations are quick to respond with a show of military force, and skirmishes break out where the PLANTs reveal their production of their own weapon: The mobile suits, the first of which is the HMF-19 General Assault Unit, or GAU. Even with inexperienced pilots, the mobile suits reap a bloody toll in the two years before finally the Atlantic Federation declares the formation of the Earth Alliance and the declaration of war against the PLANTs in February of CE 70. In the first battle of this new war, an invasion fleet from the Ptolemaeus Lunar Base destroys the colony of Junius Seven on February 14 with a nuclear device, the event becoming infamous as the Bloody Valentine.

In response, ZAFT launches an attack on the Earth, overtaking Yggdrasil Space Station and destroying it before dropping devices called Neutron Jammers onto the Earth, inhibiting nuclear fission and causing an energy crisis on the planet, using the opportunity to invade.

And thus has war again overtaken the human race, this newest one having raged for almost a year now…

– The Knight –

**Heliopolis Colony, Lagrange 3  
0753 Orb Standard Time (OST), January 25, 71 CE**

The three teens waited patiently at the auto-transit station, quite distinct from the group of teens who chattered excitedly about something or another at the other end of the station. The first of them, a brown-haired boy with brilliantly amethyst-like purple eyes, wore a simple dark blue T-shirt over a pair of slim denim jeans. The second, a shorter and somewhat younger boy with longer black hair and blue eyes, wore a brown leather jacket over a white muscle shirt, with black slacks. The last was a blond wearing yellow-tinted glasses, and a dark gray polo under a black jackets with red flames at the bottom, and jeans.

"So, you ever wonder what it would be like if you'd been raised like those kids over there?" The black-haired boy asked the brown-head, nudging him with his elbow.

"…Occasionally." He admitted. "But I wouldn't do as much good as I do now if I had been, now would I?"

"Kira's got you there Canard." The blond chuckled. "Both of us would be dead several times over by now if it weren't for him – and let's not even consider what would've happened to Orb."

"Yeah, true enough." Canard said. "Although I think you give yourself too little credit Sai…" Canard then twitched, nudging Kira again and nodding to the side when the Coordinator glanced at him. Kira and Sai looked to where he indicated, spotting the approaching group of adults. A simple check of their posture and stride revealed a military bearing, and with that and their knowledge of the state of affairs on Heliopolis told them that these were OMNI Enforcer troops.

The three teens shifted, letting the OMNI troops, led by a black-haired woman wearing shades pass and use the next auto-transit car that arrived.

"Tch. Damn." Canard swore. "They're heading the same way we are…"

"No worries." Kira soothed. "The section of Morgenroete we're heading to is completely different from where they're going – we just need to wait a few minutes and then -"

"Sai!" Startled, the blond whipped his head around to the group of teenagers, who'd now been joined by three more – among them a particularly familiar redhead.

"Flay!" He blurted, startled.

"Wait, your fiance?" Canard queried. "I thought she was going to a prep school in the Atlantic Federation!"

"That was three months ago!" Sai hissed back as his significant-other-to-be approached. "I've been out in the field with you two since then! You think I knew about this?" Then he had to shut up and slap a smile on his face, as Flay was right in front of him.

"Sai! What are you doing here? I thought you had business on the moon!" She exclaimed, throwing herself onto her fiance.

"heheh…well, that business took me here, to Heliopolis." Sai explained. "What are you doing here though Flay?"

"Well, I was in that prep school in the Atlantic Federation, like I told you," She started to explain, as Kira and Canard moved towards the next approaching auto-transit car. The two slipped into the vehicle, Kira keying the destination in quickly and hitting the start button, upon which the car accelerated, driving off towards the Morgenroete complex.

"...And so they said I could either go here to HIT, and I accepted." Flay finished her tale, grinning at Sai. "Oh, hey, where did your friends go?"

"What!" Sai whipped his head around, to where Kira and Canard had been standing about a minute ago. _You bastards!_

– The Prince and The Crucible –

**2,500 kilometers outside Heliopolis Colony Defense Zone  
0800 OST, January 25, 71 CE**

"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Captain Ades, commanding officer of the _Nazca_-Class destroyer, _Vesalius_, which drifted behind some left-over debris from Heliopolis' initial construction, behind it the _Laurasia_-Class frigates, _Gamow, Mercator _and _Descartes_.

"We need to confirm this." The infamous masked commander replied, tossing a photo towards the black-coated captain. The officer caught the film, glancing at the image of a mobile suit that, going by the samurai-esque head design, was definitely _not_ a ZAFT design. "And we can't wait for the Council to respond, or our small window will be gone. And ZAFT soldiers will pay the price."

Ades looked at the blond man askance. True, if they missed these new mobile weapons and OMNI Enforcer managed to mass-produce them, things would escalate rapidly...but...

"Orb is a neutral nation, Commander Le Creuset." Ades said. "I'm not sure the Council would want us to carry out an assault of any sort on it or its possessions."

"Orb is aiding the Alliance." Rau shot back, smoothly as ever. "They've officially forfeited that neutrality by doing so."

Outside, a dozen small black manta-like craft, meticulously designed to emit no heat and absorb or deflect radar, drifted through space, each carrying five ZAFT troopers in green and red infiltration armor, compact, flexible semi-powered suits with moderate ballistic protection. Due to their nature as infiltration units, the armor was significantly less protective than semi-powered combat armor, and this extended to the full-face visors, which were simple translucent sheets of polymer that allowed facial recognition.

In the lead craft were the five teens led by Rau. Athrun Zala, the dark blue-haired son of the PLANTs' military councilor, Patrick Zala. Yzak Joule with his white hair and distinctly unpleasant demeanor, son of Ezalia Joule, also a member of the PLANTs Supreme Council. Dearka Elsman, a dark-skinned blonde who had Tad Elsman, representing Februarius City, as his Council parent; and green-haired Nicol Amalfi, son of Yuri Amalfi, Maius City's councilor and partial owner of Maius Military Industries. Redhead Rusty Mackenzie was the oddity here, being the son of an engineer from Martius City

It was a bit of apparent politicking that saw all four 'Council Kids' assigned to the same team under the famous war hero Rau, something that proved irritating to some. Namely, Yzak.

"Four goddamn months...patrolling the far side of the PLANTs...guarding Lagrange 4...investigating false intelligence...but finally! Finally we get a worthwhile mission!" The white-head muttered, the SPI suits' comms transmitting his angry comment to the others.

"Calm down Yzak." Rusty admonished. "And keep a level head. If things here are how the commander think they are, this isn't a mission to screw up."

"Tch. Who are you to tell me what to do Mackenzie?" Yzak growled.

"Yzak, he's just trying to keep you calm." Nicol interjected.

"Quiet. We're here." Athrun's calm voice silenced them, as the craft impacted on the metal surface of Heliopolis' outer hull, clamps locking on with magnetized surfaces. The ZAFT troopers piled out, the majority consisting of 'grunt' Greencoats, Athrun and the rest of Le Creuset team being the technically in-command Redcoats. However, Athrun and the others knew enough to let the actually more experienced Greencoats to operate as they thought, considering that they'd actually done operations like this, whereas Le Creuset team had only graduated from ZAFT's Academy a mere four months ago.

All sixty troops emerged from their crafts, moving to a couple of maintenance doors on the colony's surface. A few minutes with a hand-held console and the shortly-dismantled keypad had the doors open and the ZAFT troops darting in with bursts of propellant from the backpacks of their suits.

ZAFT was in the colony.

– The Knight –

**Hanger C, Morgenroete Complex  
0843 OST**

"Damn nice place they have here." Canard remarked upon seeing the complex. It was a rather large one, including the Heliopolis Institute of Technology inside the grounds, with the Morgenroete management office in the middle of it all. The building the two Orb special forces officers were concerned with though, was Hanger C. Typical of such installations, Hanger C didn't officially exist - even more so than Hangers A and B, where the G Project mobile suits and ship were currently stored.

Canard tched at the thought of the G Project. "It's a pity we had to help out those bigots to get our own suits."

"Uncle Tei knew the deal when he had the Sahaku sign on." Kira replied. "In the end, we got far more than they did."

"Uh, Kira? We got four mobile suits. OMNI got five and a ship."

"They got five flashy prototypes and a ship that will cost them as much as one of their orbital task groups to produce. We got a viable mass-production unit and three custom variants." rebutted Kira. "The Home Islands and Selaspolis already have factories built to produce the Gunshin, and the current fleet of _Kusanagi_ are worth any three of their fleets. It'll take the Alliance weeks to refine their MS design so that it's suitable in terms of cost and construction time for their factories to produce, and months to refit even one of their _Agamemnon_ factory lines to start producing _Amatura_-Class flagships."

"...Okay, I've been with you your entire, short military career, and we've never seen that data..."

"Uncle Tei."

"Ah, right. Hey, we're here!" Canard announced, as the car pulled into the parking space. The two teens climbed out of the car, the vehicle backing out and driving away when it detected they were clear of it. "So, now what?"

"We walk in, and we check out the suits while we wait for Sai."

"Sounds good to me. By the way, you feel the slightest bit asshole-ish for leaving him behind like that?"

"After Ptolemaeus? Not in the least. You?"

"Like hell I would." The two walked into the hanger, the doors opening before them apparently automatically. Within was the central hanger floor, filled with berths for mobile weapons all around it. Of the forty-odd berths, twenty-six were filled. However, the three that the two Yamato were concerned with were covered with armored caskets.

"Ah! Lieutenant Yamato!" Someone called, drawing the slightly older one's attention, Kira's gaze falling upon a woman, about a hundred-seventy centimeters, short red hair and blue eyes, and...quite busty.

"Auntie Karen?" He sputtered.

"Now, now Kira-kun, we're at work, so it's 'Mrs. Yamato' to you." Karen Stadler Yamato, spouse of Taka Yamato, grinned devilishly. "Anyway, you're here for your team's custom Gunshin, right? Right down there, as I suppose you've guessed." She pointed, with her two nephews walking towards the caskets. As they did, Karen raised her hand to the earbud radio in her right ear. "Unseal berth caskets 203 to 205."

The three caskets cracked open slightly at the seams, followed by each of the three faces falling down to form ramps that revealed the units behind them.

The one on the left was mostly a dark blue, with a similarly dark hue of purple on its shoulders, knees, and parts of its hips and chest, with golden radiator panels on the sides of its cockpit, groin, and the backs of its calves. Attached to a mag-point dock on its right shoulder was a long-barreled rifle with a large barrel but a small bore, while at a similar point on its left hip was a short-barreled weapon that resembled a machine pistol. On the left shoulder was mounted a cannon, about as long as the mobile suit's leg. Unseen but present were the twin vertical launch systems built into its backpack.

The one on the right was almost completely red, with small accenting streaks of gold on its joints, knees, elbows and around its optics. On its left hip was attached a katana, with a groove cut into its blade in place of an edge. On the other hip was the same kind of machine pistol-like weapon the other MS had. Held by the left arm was a shield with a gun barrel protruding from its tip, while the right forearm had what looked like a mechanical lobster claw attached to it.

The one in the center was mainly gray, with a lighter, more silvery color in the areas the one on the left was purple. It had a shield on its left arm, large enough to cover it from knees to head, and on a back waist-mounted dock was a rifle comparable in style and size to a modern carbine.

Canard gave a low whistle. "Nice. Which one's mine?"

"The red one, like you requested Canard. Nice taste by the way." Karen remarked. "The blue is Sai's and Kira's is the gray and silver."

– The Prince –

**Hanger B Upper Catwalks**

The past forty-five minutes had been well-spent, according to the ZAFT intruder's timetable. Infiltration was smooth, putting them within the lower corridors of the Morgenroete complex and allowing them to proceed through various access shafts and maintenance halls to each unit's objective.

Along the way, they'd laid high-explosive charges taken from their ships' armories, and right now, Athrun held the detonator. He glanced at his watch.

Thirty seconds.

Twenty.

Fifteen.

Ten.

Five.

Three.

One.

Mark. He hit the button. Explosions rocked the complex, and outside, an emitter blasted a radio wave.

– The Crucible –

_**Vesalius **_**Hanger**

"Good boy Athrun." Rau chuckled, finalizing his GEL-GOUG's start-up. "Ades, watch for any surprise reinforcements from Selaspolis - I don't want to have to try and outrun a _Kusanagi._" The _Vesalius'_ catapult deployed, twin rails extending outwards as the electrical charges built. The inner systems pulled Rau's unit into position, leaving it floating stationary relative to the _Nazca_-class, with a few fuel lines and power cables still attached. A split-second later, the charges built and fired, generated a relatively low-power magnetic field that pulled the GEL-GOUG along at a speed of about forty kilometers per second, violently detaching the lines and cables. This custom-painted unit, white and light gray as opposed to the factory-built green coloration, headed straight for Heliopolis.

Behind it, the three _Gamows_ deployed their mobile suit teams, thirteen GAUs deploying in the same fashion, if at a somewhat lower launch speed. The rotund mobile suits followed their white-painted leader, armed with everything from submachine guns and assault rifles to sniper rifles and heavy bazookas. Finally, the launch of the second GEL-GOUG in the small task force's mobile suit retinue, a somewhat garish orange unit that accelerated from the _Mercator_.

"Good of you to join us, Commander Aiman." Le Creuset amusedly greeted his subordinate commander.

"Tch. Whatever Le Creuset." Miguel Aiman, MS Commander for the _Mercator's _mobile suit team, shot back. "Let's get this crazy operation of yours over with."

A ghostly chuckle was all that sounded back, as the pale GEL-GOUG accelerated ahead of the fourteen other suits.

Ahead, the alarms sounded in Heliopolis' security stations as the colony's sensors detected the fifteen suits, tracking them as they sped towards the docks.

Moebius mobile armors, basically up-armored space fighters with twin vulcans and the occasional dorsally-mounted railgun, spilled from the hangers of seven docked Earth Alliance ships, ostensibly freighters. The purple-and-pink-painted mobile weapons darted across the void of space at velocities that outmatched those of the basic GAU suits. However, while they certainly outpaced the mobile suits their maneuverability came nowhere near them, as shown when a Moebius attempted to strafe the GAUs, the latter only dispersing quickly in a flurry of limb movement and slight exhalations of gaseous fuel from the colloid thrusters, easily taking each GAU out of the line of fire before they returned fire.

Tracers sparked through space, bursts of 75mm Armor-Piercing (AP) and Armor-Piercing Incendiary Tracer (APIT) shells silently spat from the barrels of the GAUs' assault rifles to shred Moebius armors into so much free-floating scrap. As the Moebius fights drew closer, it only became worse for them, growing ever more incapable of dealing with the GAUs' mobility with shortening range.

One Moebius, with a clever pilot who probably paid attention during advanced spacial maneuvering classes, had the smart idea to fire his attitude thrusters and turn his mobile armor as the GAU he targeted, one of the six that wielded a recoilless launcher, dodged. However, the targeted GAU simply used a combination of its AMBAC system and the colloid thrusters, in conjunction with a burst of acceleration from its maneuvering binders, to leap out of the line of fire. Two more such reorientations and subsequent increases in acceleration resulted in the GAU slamming feet-first into the ventral surface of the Moebius, it's launcher aimed a scant thirty centimeters away from the Moebius' outer hull. The launcher fired, sending a 250mm High-Explosive Squash-Head (HESH) shell slamming into the Moebius, the warhead squashing almost flat against the armor before a high-explosive charge detonated, shattering the hull and sending shrapnel cascading throughout the Moebius' internals even as the reactionary force from the initial contact sent the GAU drifting away before it darted away, leaving the Moebius' shattered corpse to float aimlessly away.

Rau in his GEL-GOUG simply bypassed the 'dogfight', heading straight for the so-called freighters that the Moebius deployed from. A brief hum emanated from his cockpit's internal speakers, indicating the charging of the Rail-Rifle's capacitors. A few seconds later, a low beep sounded, indicating complete charge. A small smirk graced the six-times ace, as he had his MS shoulder the rifle, targeting the freighters' engines. A second later, a glowing, heated hole appeared in the engine block of one of the freighters, the compartment erupting as the ionization chambers were breached and spilled heated plasma into the ships internals. A moment later, the plasma apparently reached wherever the ship stored ammunition for the Moebius, because it exploded rather brilliantly. Rau fired again, another 60mm High-Temperature Kinetic Penetrator (HTKP) piercing through the hull of a ship and creating a new venting hole in the engine.

This time, however, the target had already unmoored, and was in the process of scrambling out of Heliopolis' dock. The sudden breach in its engine and resultant flare of plasma, along with the little momentum the high-velocity penetrator added, altered its course.

It crashed into the docks' control station.

_Perfect._

– The Knight –

**Hanger C, Morgenroete Complex**

Explosions rocked the complex, briefly shaking the hanger itself as alarms began blaring.

"Shit, a ZAFT attack? Now?" Canard growled, glaring outside towards the other hangers.

"It was only a matter of time." Kira muttered. "Canard - get in your unit and go fetch Sai." He ordered, moving back towards the front of the hanger.

"Wait, Kira! Where are you going!" Karen called after her nephew.

"To aid the OMNI Enforcer troops." He shouted back, much to the Morgenroete employee's confusion. Before she could query again, he was already beyond the doors, which cracked open slightly to allow him through.

"Oh well," Karen shrugged, "Best to just do as he says then, Canard."

"And what are you guys going to do?" The brunette-haired teen asked, already moving for the red-painted mobile suit, his Hachiman.

"Heliopolis is being invaded." Karen replied, unzipping the bland mechanic's coveralls she wore to reveal a body-conforming pilot suit underneath, as she strode for one of the other berths, where awaited a red-painted, quadruped machine. "Its Onigumo squadron has to respond of course." All around, other Morgenroete technicians darted for other machines, painted dark gray, two per machine. "Hoy, someone get Colasaur off of his ass and down here!" Karen shouted at the non-piloting techs, sliding down into the cockpit hatch of her red unit.

Outside, Kira was already speeding away, having subverted the auto-transit car's systems and engaging the locked manual mode to break virtually every traffic law in the books on his way.

The rising smoke from Hangers A and B told him the initial target of ZAFT's attack, and he swore upon seeing three of the G-Units the Alliance's G-Project had produced rise from the transport trucks they were being carted away in, much more smoothly than any data gathered indicated they could under the programmed OS.

Which meant, likely, that ZAFT infiltrators had overwritten the OS to work more effectively, and were even now stealing the G-Units.

_Wait...there's still the last two! _Kira remembered, smashing the pedal down and sending the car screeching for Hanger B.

– The Prince –

**Hanger B**

Athrun narrowed his eyes, crouching behind the chassis of a large transport truck - a type apparently modified to carry mobile suits. He glanced to the side, where Rusty awaited his order. Ahead, there was the two mobile suits - both a drab, gray color at the moment, one currently being used as cover by a blond officer of OMNI Enforcer, who currently held the two ZAFT Reds at bay with a pistol.

A moment of cautious wait, and then Athrun signed at Rusty. The redhead darted around the corner of his truck as Athrun leaned out, spraying the mobile suit's armor with bullets from his carbine, forcing the OMNI officer to keep his head down.

Rusty almost reached the mobile suit's feet, when a screech distracted all three combatants, drawing their attention to the gaping doors through which the convoy with the first three of the Alliance's prototypes had left.

A Heliopolis auto-transit car smashed into the berth the Alliance prototype rested in, right in front of Rusty. The impact stunned the three soldiers, more from shock at the sudden and random nature of it than from any physical effect, and allowed the apparent driver, who'd leaped out of the car at the last moment, to roll onto his feet in a kneeling position, swiftly drawing and firing a handgun with a long, thick barrel at Rusty.

Athrun could only watch in horror as the rounds blasted through Rusty's body, splattering blood on the ground as the redhead's mouth gaped in shock before the ZAFT Red crashed down to the ground.

"Rusty!" Athrun cried, before he twisted his face into a snarl, and swung his carbine around at the newcomer, pulling the trigger.

_Shit, it's empty!_ He scrabbled for another clip, only to find the loops holding his magazines completely empty. _Fine._ He dropped the carbine, drawing his graduation knife from its sheath in his belt. Using the thruster pack on his SPI suit to cross more ground quicker, Athrun readied himself to stab the intruder, even as his target pivoted to bring his handgun on the Red.

There was nothing but a meter separating them when the two fully faced each other, and both fully saw the other's face. And thus, both were stunned by who they saw.

"Athrun!" Kira gasped in shock, as the Zala heir mouthed the name of his friend from Copernicus City's preparatory academy.

The two stilled, the surreal nature of the moment blinding them to the chaos of flame and explosions around them.

They were quickly brought back to reality when a flurry of bullets scattered across the hanger's floor, both teens leaping apart and glancing to the side. There, atop the prototype suit with its cockpit hatch opened, crouched the blond OMNI officer.

"Hoy kid! Get up here!" He called, firing another burst at Athrun. Swearing, the Red backed off again, before turning and darting for the other mobile suit. Mounting the prototype's torso and slamming the hatch release, he glanced back to see Kira climbing into the other unit's cockpit. A grimace crossed Athrun's face as he hopped into the unit he stood upon.

Recalling the boot-up procedures of his GAU, Athrun was surprised to find just how much the Alliance had co-opted ZAFT technology when the systems started up almost exactly the same.

However, instead of the more familiar Adaptive Synchronized System, something else scrolled down the screen.

**General **

**Utilitarian**

** Natural **

**Dynamic **

**Automated**

** Module Control System**

Athrun pulled up the system, scrolling through modules and sub-systems, with a growing sense of exasperation. The system was highly inefficient, incapable of handling the load from the AMBAC system, or properly synchronizing the data feeds from the sensors and the control sticks. Athrun looked around and found the keyboard, sliding the interface out and rapidly reprogramming the operating system. Most of it he kept intact, but he overwrote key parts with the system data from the GAU and GEL-GOUG OS.

Finally finished, Athrun returned the keyboard to its cradle on the side of the cockpit, grasping the control yokes and throttle sticks and bringing the mobile suit up to a standing position.

He panned the cameras to the side, to see the other prototype similarly breaking free of the restraints holding it to its berth, a mass of light gray that stood before him.

– The Twin Commanders –

**Location: Classified**

The twins observed the data feed. Several videos from the colony's internal and external security systems saw the three Alliance prototypes smashing through the shipping corridors to exit the colony, while combat sensor data showed the GAUs and two GEL-GOUGs burning through the Moebius flights on their way to the colony's outer hull.

"And so it begins." They intoned, leaning back in their respective seats, the white-haired Taka tapping the arm of his chair and summoning a holographic interface that listed Heliopolis' self-defense forces, while black-haired Tei pulled up a map of Lunar Orbit from Lagrange 3, where the majority of Orb's space colonies rested, entering data that drew a route from Heliopolis to Earth, past the Eurasian Federation's Artemis station, through the deadly Debris Belt, and down to Orb.

– The Author –

Alright. A little late...

**(A little? Gundam Jesus above man, it's a week late!)**

...Well...yeah.

**(...That's it? No excuses, no justifications?)**

I'm actually just going to move on.

**(Wuss.)**

What, you want me to talk about it? Fine. New game: Mobile Suit Gundam: Encounters in Space. It's old, but hey, it was rather fun...so long as I wasn't fighting Amuro or Char. And then the fifth episode of Gundam Unicorn came out.

**(Oh yeah, that episode was awesome! And that Banshee! Mreow!)**

...What.

**(Give me a few hours alone with that chassis!)**

Dear god, you cannot be a part of my psyche...

**(Well, joke's on you pal.)**

Anyway, as you can see, Kira's attitude has (as with my last Seed story) changed from canon, in this case rather than from seeing his adopted parents boiled and exploded in a fountain of gore, he's simply been raised by a very different set of people who probably have quite the different set of philosophies, beliefs, and habits. Mostly, highly militaristic.

**(You know, I've been meaning to talk to you about that...)**

About what?

**(You've repeatedly stated your ideal Gundam protagonist to be Heero Yuy...)**

...Yes...and?

**(And you've been spending all this time writing in Gundam Seed, where you have to go through all this trouble to justify giving Kira a more aggressive, less pacifist characerization...)**

What's your point?

**(Well, rather than doing that, why don't you just write a Gundam Wing story?)**

...

**(...It completely slipped your mind...didn't it?)**

...yes, yes it did.

**(...You are so stupid. Well people, give this moron some positive words! 'Cause there ain't no way he's getting any from me! Read and Review!)**

...well, at least you didn't threaten them this time. Oh, and before I forget, I'm going to try and draw out all of the original mecha designs on my deviantArt profile, which is linked in my profile here, so check it out if you guys are interested!

Knightmare Gundam of Ni


	3. Phase 02: Gods of War

Gundam Seed: Kira, Knight of Orb

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my Original Characters and my Original Mecha Designs

Phase 02: Gods of War

– The Knight –

**Morgenroete Complex, Heliopolis Colony, Lagrange 3****  
****0850 OST, January 25, 71 CE**

"Alright then, now, what did the manual say? Ah, right, press this button…" The blond OMNI officer muttered to himself, pressing several buttons and flipping some switches as Kira watched, confounded, from the small, cramped space behind the command chair of the mobile suit's cockpit.

_He's not serious is he? This is one of OMNI Enforcer's elite pilot candidates?_ Kira thought to himself incredulously, staring at the man. If this was the best OMNI could scrounge up to pilot their expensive and advanced prototype unit – _wait, he looks familiar…_

"And there we go!" The officer exclaimed happily as the systems booted, the viewscreen running through the OS start-up before clearing and displaying a crisp view of the hanger's ceiling. Kira couldn't help but twitch at the numerous errors he saw just from the brief start-up screens alone. "Ah, looks like the camera systems are working properly…" The pilot muttered, grabbing the controls, before taking a deep breath and moving them.

Slowly, the mobile suit rose, climbing onto its feet as the hanger burned around it and secondary explosions making the ground quake violently.

"Whew! Well, that's one hurdle…Oh shit!" Kira saw the other prototype rise, this one possessing slightly bulkier and more angular armor, and a distinctly larger 'V-fin' headpiece. The OMNI pilot reacted to the sight by stomping on the thruster pedals, sending the mobile suit crashing through the weakened ceiling of the hanger. The other machine was close behind, landing a scant twenty meters away…right next to an orange-painted GEL-GOUG.

"Crap." The officer, Kira decided, had a rather excellent talent for summations of dangerous situations.

For a moment, there was no action, as the orange ZAFT suit swiveled its monoeye to lock onto the hijacked unit for several moments, before turning back to lock onto Kira and the OMNI pilot's suit. Apparently, Athrun had told the GEL-GOUG pilot that their mobile suit was not in ZAFT hands.

At the thought of his old friend, memories and feelings bubbled up to the surface of Kira's mind, before being ruthlessly buried under a decade or more of militaristic mental conditioning. Time enough to think after Heliopolis wasn't under assault.

As Kira returned his attention to the OMNI prototype's main screen, the GEL-GOUG advanced towards it, shouldering its railgun.

"Shit, shit, where's that activation switch?" The blond pilot muttered, frantically searching the cockpit. "Damn it…" Again, Kira had to wonder at how much training this guy had. Recalling his own studies into the G-Units' designs, he glanced at the console and found the big red button, pressing it.

Outside, the prototype suit changed colors rapidly, all the shades of gray brightening into white, red and blue, just as the GEL-GOUG fired. The hyper-velocity shell smacked into the G-Unit's torso, sending shocks throughout the structure and knocking it back a step. However, there was no actual damage, no penetration. Phase Shift Armor was virtually immune to physical damage, even the extremely high-kinetic-energy shots from a railgun.

"Whew, that was close!" The blond officer sighed in relief, before his face assumed a more serious expression, and he grasped the control yokes.

Kira settled back to watch.

The prototype took a long step – and promptly fell over. Inside the cockpit, Kira found his face pressed against the main screen and a new ache in his skull.

"That…did not…work out…how I thought it would." The pilot strained, righting the suit as the GEL-GOUG and the hijacked prototype looked on in either pity, amusement…or both. After a moment, the prototype activated its own Phase Shift Armor, turning into a variety of red hues before lifting off and flying for the colony exit. Kira repressed the feeling of nausea and loss again, climbing out from the cramped space he was in.

"Move over for a second please." Kira asked, before rudely shoving the OMNI pilot out of the seat.

"Hey! What are you…" The man's voice trailed off as Kira pulled out the keyboard mounted on the side of the cockpit, rapidly using several programmed hot-keys and macros to pull up and then heavily alter the Mobile Suit Operating System. While Morgenroete (and thus, Orb) had aided OMNI Enforcer with its G Project quite a bit, they'd pretty much left them to flounder when it came to the OS. And thus, lacking the many highly experienced technical experts that ZAFT had, the Alliance software engineers had crafted what was the OS equivalent of a child's finger painting. Nice from a certain perspective, but technically horrible from a professional perspective.

So now, Kira had to rapidly rewrite hundreds of thousands of lines of code, in the middle of battle, for an advanced and complicated OS, in order for the presumably skilled Natural pilot to use.

It took him twenty seconds.

"Alright, you should be able to pilot it effectively now." He informed the officer, climbing back into the space behind the chair. With a confused glance at Kira, the officer sat back in the chair, again grabbing the controls and moving towards the GEL-GOUG. Now, the mobile suit's stride was smoother, easier, and much less difficult for the pilot to control.

"Damn kid…" He muttered, before drawing one of the prototype's standard hand-held weapons – a beam saber, the simple cylindrical hilt emitting a bright, pink-white blade of plasma. Suitably alarmed, the GEL-GOUG started firing rapidly; railgun shells smacking solidly into the prototype unit's armor and making it stutter a step, before the machine pressed onward. And soon, the prototype was in striking range, and it swiped out with the saber, cutting into the railgun as the GEL-GOUG leaped back. For a moment, it seemed that the commander-type mobile suit would continue the fight, reaching for the mono-edged broadsword sheathed on its waist. Instead of fighting further though, it leaped away, maneuvering binders firing and sending it trailing behind the stolen prototype.

The blond pilot notably slouched in relief.

"Whew! That was a…exciting fight." He muttered before turning to Kira. "Well, thanks for saving us back there. The name's Mu La Flaga."

– The Crucible –

**Heliopolis Colony Defense Zone  
0902 Hours**

Another Moebius exploded, scattering burning droplets of propellant and shards of metal and cermet into the vacuum, the GAU that destroyed it darting past, firing a burst of 90mm shells at the unfortunate mobile armor's wingman. Rau watched, firing off a railgun shot every now and then, perfectly amused by the conflict. An alert popped up on his HUD, identifying a new arrival to the battle – it was Miguel.

"Miguel? Where's the other unit?" Rau queried, as he'd been told by Athrun a few minutes earlier that Miguel was in the process of retrieving the last prototype suit after Rusty's death.

"The damn thing destroyed my rifle!" Miguel shouted back. "It had some sort of beam weapon, a blade or something! Just cut through it like it was nothing! And its armor! It started out all dull and gray and then got colorful, and the railgun couldn't pierce it!"

"Hm. It seems these units are more dangerous than I expected." Rau noted. "Where's the rest of your team?"

"In the colony, dealing with the remaining defense forces."

"I see. Return to the _Mercator _and refit your GEL-GOUG. And this time, bring a shield along – these suits were issued with those for a reason."

"Yeah, whatever." Miguel grumbled, his GEL-GOUG flying back to where the four ships were waiting. Rau turned, and fired his railgun twice, along with a burst from the heavy machinegun built into the shield, neatly removing the last three Moebius craft from the equation.

"Messa and Barton Teams form up and follow me into the colony. One of the prototype units hasn't been secured, and we need to capture it immediately." Ignoring the chorus of replies, Rau sped his GEL-GOUG to the colony wall, picking out the entrance Miguel and his team had used and swiftly entering it, the GAUs close behind. It was a fairly straight shaft, probably included for emergency entrance into and exit out of the colony for shuttles, tenders and other small spacecraft.

The neat square cut through the airlock door at the end showed that Miguel had decided to show off his skill to his team again, something Rau noted to correct as he flew through.

Almost immediately, he felt a twinge – like a sudden shock through his nervous system.

"So you're here! _Mu La Flaga!_" He grinned, chuckling, as he swerved the GEL-GOUG in the direction his preternatural sense indicated.

– The Ace –

**Morgenroete Complex**

In the prototype mobile suit GMS-Y122 Xiphos, Mu felt his spine shiver as the sensation he'd first felt months ago at the Grimaldi Front return.

_Rau Le Creuset!_

"Kid, you might want to brace yourself here." Mu warned the purple-eyed teen, tensing up. "Things are about to get rather messy." Thankfully, the kid just nodded in response, no panicked questions about what was going on, or crying about something or the other.

When Mu had introduced himself, the kid had briefly stared at him, before giving his name as Kira and clamming up. The ace really couldn't blame him. It was almost patently obvious Kira was a Coordinator; what with that crazy programming he'd done that made the Xiphos move so much smoother and faster. And with Mu being an OMNI Enforcer soldier, the kid was probably afraid that he was a Cosmonaut, and going to shoot him or something.

_No time to think about it!_ Mu berated himself, as the Xiphos' sensor systems screamed bloody murder at the detection of a high-speed unit. Having already turned the Xiphos to face the direction the systems indicated, mere seconds before they alerted him, Mu caught sight of the familiar white-on-gray color scheme that he'd first seen adorning the frame of one of the first humanoid-model GAUs.

Cursing momentarily at the lack of any significant ranged weapons on the Xiphos, Mu triggered the CIWS guns, the head-mounted Vulcans spitting streams of 55mm rounds at the GEL-GOUG. Infuriatingly, the white mobile suit weaved around the shells, in precisely controlled movements and bursts of thrust that made the GEL-GOUG seem to dance in mid-air, twisting around in mid-air and firing its railgun. The hyper-velocity projectile slammed into the Xiphos' torso armor, and the power alert started blaring.

"Damn!" Mu cursed. The Phase-Shift Armor heavily drained the Xiphos' energy during operation, and even the new fuel cell it had couldn't make it work for long. He had five minutes, less if Le Creuset hit him with that railgun again.

The situation became much, much worse when ten GAUs poured out of the same hole that Rau's GEL-GOUG appeared from, armed with what looked like every single anti-mobile weapon armament available to them, and opened fire. Rounds battered the Xiphos, each hit draining a little more energy, and then the recoilless launchers fired. Mu fought against the shaking that the jarring shell impacts created, twisting the Xiphos' control yokes and throwing the mobile suit aside as the self-propelled shells screeched past.

"Well, that was-" An explosion interrupted Mu, a shell exploding against the Xiphos' leg sending the prototype crashing to the ground. Inside the cockpit, Mu rocked against the command chair's restraints, and Kira fell forward, only his hands preventing his head from cracking painfully against the main screen. The alert screeched again, and outside, the Xiphos' armor slowly turned gray. "Crap." With the Xiphos now on reserve power, Mu struggled to get it upright, and the mobile suit rose just enough for it to look up, right at the GAU leveling a sub-machine gun at it.

Both Mu and Kira flinched at the sight – and then the GAU exploded, what was once its torso becoming an expanding blast of fragmented armor, the mobile suit falling to the ground in two pieces.

"Need some help?" A voice called from the radio. Suddenly, a red blur darted across the side-screen and into the main screen's view, before resolving into a red mobile suit that stood before one of the GAUs holding a recoilless launcher. The red suit rapidly drew what looked like a katana, of all things. Which then emitted a bright pink plasma beam along its edge and sliced into the GAU, bisecting it neatly.

– The Knight –

_Is this how Uncle Tei feels whenever he surprises someone with an out-of-the-blue tactical maneuver?_ Kira wondered, enjoying the slack-jawed look of shock on Mu's face at the sight of Canard's Hachiman, the red Gundam – almost a blatant copy of the aesthetic style of OMNI's G-Units – raised the shield/automatic linear induction gun on its left arm and fired at the GAUs. High-velocity rounds chewed apart the leg of one GAU as they fell back from the modified Gunshin, and another one exploded into a cloud of free-falling shrapnel, evidence of the high-powered sniper railgun that Sai's Bishamon used.

"Excuse me Mu, but I have to go now." Kira told the befuddled ace. Reaching over, he hit the Xiphos' cockpit switch, jumping out of the Gundam, which was on its hands and knees, and glancing about for the Bishamon.

Almost as though accommodating his search, the red-and-blue beam of a high-impulse beam cannon vaporized a GAU, drawing Kira's gaze to the side, where the Bishamon crouched in a Morgenroete residential block.

– The Crucible –

For a moment, Rau had been thrown by the sudden appearance of three more mobile suits, assuming that the Earth Alliance had actually manufactured more prototype units. That lasted until the new red suit had fired upon the GAUs with its shield-mounted weapon, displaying the rather blatant golden sunburst of Orb on the defensive equipment. And then, enlightened, he had to chuckle.

"Very clever, Tei Yamato. Using the Earth Alliance's G-Project to piggyback your own MS development project on." It was an inspired idea. The Alliance, desperate for mobile suits of their own, goes to the most technologically advanced terrestrial nation to acquire aid in developing some. Tei, seizing the opportunity, works out a deal where the Alliance foots the bill, not just for their own prototypes, but _also Orb's units!_ All without the Alliance leadership knowing about it, simply because none of their people had the expertise to check on Morgenroete's claims.

"Messa team, retreat; Barton, distract the red one. I will deal with the sniper." Rau ordered, the damaged surviving units retreating as the others ascended to stay away from the red unit's beam-edged blade. As they did so, Rau upped the thrust from his GEL-GOUG's maneuvering binders; twisting and turning the advanced mobile suit throw several maneuvers to throw off the sniper's aim as he back-tracked it to the residential block it was dug into, something rather simple to do after they'd revealed themselves with that incredibly high-powered beam. Soon enough, the GEL-GOUG's mooneye locked onto a dark blue and purple unit; with the same basic features as the red one, holding a massive rifle in one hand that rested across a shield held horizontally, resting in a niche in the middle of the shield's side. Resting atop its shoulder was a slowly cooling cannon, barrel visibly hot from the beam it had fired.

Rau wasted no time in engaging it, firing a railgun round at the suit and following it up with bursts of 90mm shells. He was surprised when the unit strafed to the side, side-stepping the railgun shot just before it fired and activating a trio of thrusters on its back to hover aside as Rau sprayed machinegun fire at it.

"Sir! Reinforcements!" Rau was distracted by the cry of someone from Barton team, and turned the GEL-GOUG, swiveling its monoeye to see what looked like a swarm of twenty mechanical spiders descend upon the battle, led by a red one that was more like a scorpion, with its three-jointed tail. Said tail slammed into the torso of a GAU, four claw-like digits clamping around the unfortunate mobile suit as a steady red glow grew from the 'stinger'. The GAU…'bubbled' is the only way Rau could describe it, its hull glowing red, before it simply exploded.

"Perhaps you should pay more attention to your front." A voice suggested over an open channel, drawing Rau's attention back to the sniper – only to find a silver-and-gray unit taking up the majority of his view, a hot violet-and-white beam emitting from the tip of its medium-sized shield. Rau flared thrusters, interposing his GEL-GOUGs shield between it and the blade, which bit into the slab of metal, specially designed to defend against warship beam cannons, and sliced straight through it and the integrated machinegun, only slightly slowed.

And as if the universe simply wanted to prove bad things come in threes, again, there was an explosion, out of which flew a pure-white ship shaped like a wide dagger or a spade, with a blunted tip that glowed with the after-effects of a high-energy discharge, and two protrusions to either side of it that were obviously hangers and catapults.

"Damn." Rau swore. "All teams, retreat back to the ships." He ordered, following his own command and flying the GEL-GOUG back to, and through, the open airlock.

– The Ace –

Mu, still somewhat shocked, took some time to realize that his radio was squawking.

"-iphos, this is _Armatura_, please respond!" The voice calling was, if he said so, a rather pleasant, and familiar, female one. Reaching over, he hit the transmit button on the radio.

"_Armatura,_ this is Lieutenant Mu La Flaga in the Xiphos." He replied.

"Oh thank God, you're alive! This is Lieutenant Ramius, from the engineering team. All of the officers are dead, and so are the other test pilots!"

"Damn it!" Mu swore, pounding his chair's arm. "As if the theft of the other units weren't bad enough!"

"Excuse me," Another voice cut in, also that of a woman's, if quite harsher in tone, "But what are those other G-Units then?"

"Gunshin, and these are Orb's." Kira's voice, much to Mu's surprise, answered abruptly.

"Who is this?" The second woman demanded.

"Lieutenant Kira Yamato, commander of Orb Special Forces Team Kishi." That made Mu's jaw go slack…again.

– The Author –

Aaaand that's Phase 02, with introduction of the Gunshin (specifically, the customized versions used by Kishi Team) and the Xiphos, this fanfic's Strike analogue.

**(MPHhhmmpphH!)**

Ignore that, now, for most of the original mobile weapons in this fiction, I intend to fully draw them out. In fact, I already have all three Kishi Team variants of the Gunshin and the GEL-GOUG drawn out and posted on my deviantArt profile (again, linked in my profile page) And, some of you may notice that this story has a cover. It too, is available for viewing in its full glory, as well as its previous iteration.

I admit, I was actually still having trouble with Kira's characterizations and how far they should deviate from canon...before I realized that I had a perfectly plausible and believable plot point that would totally justify even Kira going nutso-psycho like Rau! Not that he's going to turn out like that, but just saying...to give you a hint, it starts with a G and ends with an S.

Ah, there are so many things I could talk about here...why is Mu the Xiphos' test pilot...what my design intentions are for the mecha...the naming scheme for each faction...but I figure I'll save those for anyone who goes to post on my forums.

**(Mphmmpphamph)**

Quiet you.

On other things, how many of you are checking out the stuff coming out of E3? I gotta say, Halo 4 is looking awesome, between the new designs for the weapons and enemies, as well as the completely new enemies, the Prometheans. Although I wonder why the Promethean Knight has such an unsettling human skull inside its head...Also, Black Ops II looks promising. Crysis 3 too. Huh. You notice that they're all sci-fi shooters? Hell I think I've overexposed myself, because after I spent four hours watching the XBOX and PS3 press events, I started dreaming up a mecha video game action rpg shooter...and then I started thinking out the expanded universe for it...and then I started typing out details.

I might actually write an original story out of it. I dunno, we'll see.

Knightmare Gundam of Ni


	4. Technical File 1: ZAFT Grunt MS

Kira, Soldier of Orb

Technical File 1: ZAFT Grunt MS

******HMF-19****  
**___GAU (General Assault Unit)_

Unit Type: Mass-Production General Assault Fighter

Manufacturer: Asimov Design Bureau

Operator: ZAFT

Height: 16.9 Meters

Weight: 79.7 Metric Tons

Armor Materials: Steel-Titanium Alloy

Power Source: Zinc-Air Flow Battery

Propulsion: 2 x Propulsion Binders (Space: 4 x Monopropellant Rockets; Atmosphere: 2 x Ionizing Ramjets; Sea: 2 x Aquatic Turbofan Engines)  
8 x Electrostatic Ion Thrusters  
Many x Colloid Verniers

Operating System: Adaptive Synchronized System

Special Systems: Active Mass Balance Auto-Control System

Equipment and Design Features: Modular Propulsion Binders (Space, Atmosphere, and Sea Types)  
Mono-Eye Centralized Visual Sensor System

Fixed Armaments: 2 x Foot-Integrated 13mm Anti-Infantry Machineguns  
2 x 3-Tube L66 Missile Launchers (Optional)

Optional Hand Armaments: L5 50mm Sub-Machine Gun  
L17 75mm Heavy Assault Rifle  
L95 105mm Anti-Ship Rifle  
R29 250mm Recoilless Launcher  
R44 Cruise Missile Launcher  
A9 Mono-Edged Broadsword

Bio: The very first combat mobile suit produced, ZAFT's General Assault Unit has become the baseline for all mobile suits developed since its original performance in CE 68. Having been originally designed based on worker mobile armors, the GAU has a rather rotund design, with the limbs being more like bolted on additions than integrated appendages. The more recent G ground combat variant possesses a more conventionally humanoid frame, if still rather squat.

Powered by a large Zinc-Air Flow Battery, the GAU has a long operation period, capable of going for fifty-two hours without refueling at a ship or other supporting facility like a hanger.

As it was the first mobile suit, and the Active Mass Balance Auto-Control system was as yet untested, the PLANT engineers who designed the GAU put on an array of thrusters and verniers more suited to mobile armors, in addition to the primary propulsion binders. This makes the GAU extremely agile and fast, especially compared to the Moebius, as its use of the AMBAC system for attitude control, combined with the thrusters and verniers allow it to change direction on a dime faster than the Moebius. The original propulsion binders, designed for space use, had two monopropellant rockets built into each binder. When ZAFT invaded Earth, new binders were designed for use in atmosphere and underwater, using an Ionizing Ramjet that partially converted air and fuel into plasma, and a Turbofan engine designed for use when submerged.

The GAU's armor consists of light-weight rolled armor plating made from an alloy of iron, carbon and titanium simply called Steel-Titanium alloy. It's effective against standard mobile armor cannons, although high-velocity linear cannons and railguns have an easier time penetrating it, and it's virtually worthless against beam weapons of any kind.

The most complicated part of the GAU is it's operating system, called an Adaptive Synchronized System. It works in conjunction with lesser systems in the GAU's processors, creating a linked network of program modules that control everything from sensors, to thruster output, to AMBAC degree, resulting in an enormously complicated system that requires a precise control to operate correctly. Due to this, it would take a Natural of great skill to properly control a GAU without the suit tripping over its own feet, or overcompensating its spin.

Contained in the fin that runs from its forehead to the back of the head is a simple radar sensor system, much like the one carried by modern mobile armors. However, with the Neutron Jammer's side effect of scrambling radio waves, the primary sensor of the GAU is it's Mono-Eye Centralized Visual Sensor System, essentially a high-powered multi-frequency camera system equipped with a laser rangefinder and a semi-automated tracking program. Typically used as the primary sensor, it works in conjunction with both the radar and several less-powerful and smaller camera systems mounted on the head to quickly acquire and track a select target.

Fixed into the GAU's feet are two 13mm machineguns intended for use against infantry, typically used to suppress them in support of allied infantry, allowing the latter to advance unhindered. Optionally mounted on the legs are two L66 Missile Launchers, each of which has three missiles with high-explosive warheads.

While during their original deployment, the GAUs wielded what amounted to haphazardly modified CIWS turrets and tank cannons, continuing refinements have produced the first hand-held mobile suit weapons, each of which are pretty much vastly enlarged versions of infantry small arms.

The two most common weapons used by GAU pilots are the L5 50mm Sub-Machinegun and the L17 75mm Heavy Assault Rifle, the former being smaller and lighter, thus allowing the GAU to move faster while the latter is more powerful with a greater armor-penetration ability and more range.  
Typically reserved for recon units, the L95 104mm Anti-Ship Rifle is essentially the GAU's version of a sniper rifle, used to take out warship bridges.  
For use against ships and heavy fortifications, the R44 Cruise Missile Launcher carries two large cruise missiles apiece, and possesses the necessary guidance module to home them into the target.  
Originally conceived as a joke, the A9 Mono-Edged Broadsword recently went into production when it became apparent that GAUs were being stolen and salvaged before being put back into action by the Earth Alliance as well as several independent groups. Made of a light-weight steel alloy and sharpened via laser to have a cutting edge composed of a single molecule, the sword can cut easily through armor plating and allow a GAU to take another one down without killing the pilot if so desired.

******HMF-22****  
**___GEL-GOUG (Governing Elite Leader - General Oversight Unit Guide)_

Unit Type: Limited Production Command Mobile Suit

Manufacturer: Asimov Design Bureau

Operator: ZAFT

Height: 17.6 Meters

Weight: 82.7 Metric Tons

Armor Materials: Steel-Titanium Alloy

Power Source: Extended Zinc-Air Flow Battery

Propulsion: 2 x Propulsion Binders (Space: 4 x Monopropellant Rockets; Atmosphere: 2 x Ionizing Ramjets; Sea: 2 x Aquatic Turbofan Engines)  
4 x Electrostatic Ion Thrusters w/ Thrust-Vectoring Nozzles

Operating System: Adaptive Reaction System - Enhanced

Special Systems: Active Mass Balance Auto-Control System

Equipment and Design Features: Modular Propulsion Binders (Space, Atmosphere, and Sea Types)  
Mono-Eye Centralized Visual Sensor System Mark 2

Fixed Armaments: 2 x Head-Mounted 50mm CIWS Guns  
2 x 3-Tube L66 Missile Launchers (Optional)

Standard Hand Armaments: 1 x Armed Ablative Shield (Integrated 90mm Heavy Machinegun)  
1 x 60mm Rail-Rifle

Optional Hand Armaments: L5 50mm Sub-Machine Gun  
L17 75mm Heavy Assault Rifle  
L95 105mm Anti-Ship Rifle  
R29 250mm Recoilless Launcher  
R44 Cruise Missile Launcher  
A9 Mono-Edged Broadsword

Bio: ZAFT's next-generation mobile suit, the rather awkwardly-named GEL-GOUG is currently in limited production and issued to ZAFT Commanders and Special Units.

Designed to have much longer staying power than the GAU, the GEL-GOUG hosts an enlarged Zinc-Air Flow Battery, allowing seventy-two hours of uninterrupted operation.

Having proven the maneuverability afforded to mobile suits by the AMBAC system, Asimov Design Bureau's engineers took the initial propulsion systems of the GAU and stripped the Colloid Thrusters and four of the Electrostatic Ion Thrusters from the frame, while adding on thrust-vectoring nozzles to the remaining four thrusters. The overall result was greater top speed and acceleration due to the reduced mass given by stripping the Colloid Thrusters' fuel reserves, with only a comparatively minor loss in maneuverability.

The GEL-GOUG uses the same armor as the GAU.

The operating system has been overhauled, stream-lining the system architecture and allowing for a generally faster processing speed that allows the GEL-GOUG's targeting systems to more accurately acquire and track high-speed enemies, while also enhancing the ability of the sensors to overcome the Neutron-Jammer's radio-scrambling side-effect.

With data on the extent of N-Jammer interference, the engineers modified the sensor system, expanding the head-mounted sensor finn and allowing it to expend more power to acquire and track targets in a general area or acutely scan a small volume. As well, an updated Mono-Eye system was installed, using a Laser Distance and Ranging (LADAR) in place of the more simpler but also cheaper laser range-finder, allowing the GEL-GOUG to have a more detailed and persistent target lock with the system, giving an overall increase to accuracy.

While capable of using the same weapons as the GAU, the GEL-GOUG also comes equipped with its own weapons. First, rather than the 13mm machineguns, it mounts two 50mm quad-barreled CIWS guns in its head, proven to be equally effective against heavy vehicles and infantry alike.  
It also marks the first use of a shield on a ZAFT MS, the Armed Ablative Shield designed to defend against the Earth Alliance's ship-mounted beam cannons while also having a built-in heavy machinegun.  
The standard-issue hand-held weapon for the GEL-GOUG is the 60mm Rail-Rifle. Firing a high-velocity armor-piercing incendiary slug at high velocities, the Rail-Rifle is most effective against heavily-armored units, and has a magazine loaded with twenty-five rounds.

– The Author –

Alright, so as noted in other updated stories, I've had a big, long absence from Fanfic writing-

**(Lazy ass)**

-And am now coming back to write, especially Knight of Orb, but in this case it's going to be a short while before the next real chapter comes out, so I'm posting this first Technical File to-

**(Delay and make excuses, infuriating most of your pathetically small readership)**

Oh look, it's Sentinel Prime.

**(DUCK AND COVER! _leaps behind a wooden wall)_**

Truly an example of mechanical logic. Anyway, long story short, real update for this story soon, hope some of you guys get a bit satisfied with this, if not, sorry.

**(Hey, maybe you shouldn't work so much on that Mass Effect crossover, devote more time to this?)**

Maybe you should run from that Brute husk.

**(What are you- OH MY DEVIL GUNDAM! RUN!)**

Knightmare Gundam of Ni


	5. Phase 03: Prep Time

Gundam Seed: Kira, Knight of Orb

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my Original Characters and my Original Mecha Designs

Phase 03: Prep Time

– The Prince –

**2,500 Kilometers outside Heliopolis Defense Zone, _Vesalius_ Hanger  
1029 OST, January 25, 71 CE**

Inside the stolen mobile suit, identified as the GMS-Y317 Aspis (_What a weird name..._) Athrun rapidly sorted through the morass of codes that was the unit's operating system.

It was a rather dull affair, even with its complexity, since all he was really doing was evaluating sections of the operating system's architecture and implementing what improvements he could by simply copy-pasting sections of code from the GAU and GEL-GOUG OS where they would do the most good, then rechecking those sections and editing for better performance.

All-in-all, the 'Aspis' probably wouldn't be fully combat-capable for another day or two, maybe less if he could confer with the others...

And at that thought, Athrun's mood soured.

_Damn it Rusty..._ He thought bitterly. However, before he could fall into depression, a sudden alarm blared, drawing his attention outside the cockpit, to the hanger.

"Commander Le Creuset's unit is damaged! Prepare for a rough landing!" The head hanger technician barked, sending lesser mechanics scurrying to grab tools and activate systems as he deployed the capture net, a net made of broad, elastic polymer bands.

There was barely a second before a white-and-gray blur crashed into the net, the elastic visibly straining against the momentum of the GEL-GOUG. Athrun was surprised to see actual, real combat damage in the form of a partly-molten scar running across the GEL-GOUG's arm where the commander usually mounted his suit's shield.

"What in the world..." He muttered, returning to the Aspis' cockpit and resuming the OS alterations. _Did you do that Kira?_

– The Knight –

**Morgenroete Complex, Heliopolis Colony, Lagrange 3********  
**

Kira could feel the wary gazes as he rode the dismounting cable from the Takehaya's cockpit to the _Armatura's _hanger deck. Before him, kneeling on the extended launch catapult, knelt the Xiphos, Mu standing on its open cockpit hatch and giving Kira a speculative look, while all around were the tattered remnants of the crew intended for the _Armatura.  
_

He could see some of them nervously fingering their sidearms, clearly nervous at the probability of his being a Coordinator.

_Hopefully, Canard and Sai will be able to dissuade them from trying anything when they find out. _Kira thought grimly. As his feet touched the deck, two women, officers judging by their epaulets and ribbons. The first, a brown-haired woman, while the second was a rather stern-looking woman with black hair...who looked rather familiar.

_Ah, the woman from the auto-transit station!_ Kira recalled, and as the officers came close, he saw the black-haired one didn't recognize him. Not too surprising, after all, he'd just been another teenager waiting for a transit car to the university...while he'd been on the watch for any OMNI soldiers all the time.

Shaking off the shock of recognition, Kira recomposed himself into a straight-backed posture as the brown-haired women drew even with him.

"Lieutenant Yamato?" She asked, a slight hint of disbelief in her voice as she stared at him.

"I am." He confirmed. "And who am I speaking to?"

"Lieutenant Murrue Ramius...Captain of the _Armatura_, I suppose." She replied.

"There are no other ranking officers?" Kira asked.

"No, they...they were all killed in the initial explosions." Murrue answered sadly.

_All the officers? Jefferson, Richards, Dufrens, Alexii...damn, that's pretty much all the ranking Cosmonauts assigned to the ship! _Kira thought rather gleefully. "My condolences." He nodded briefly to hid the slight smirk on his lips. _Uncle Tei's rubbing off on me too much... _"However, I have to address some other matter."

"Like?"

"Per the agreement between Morgenroete and the Orb government, I am temporarily assuming command over the vessel _Armatura_, its crew, as well as any supporting craft and personnel, including the Xiphos." Kira announced. In return, he got the incredulous stares of every person present.

"Mister- Lieutenant Yamato," The stern-looking ensign, going by her rank insignia, spoke up. "The _Armatura_ and its personnel are men and materiel of the Earth Alliance's military branch, the Oppose Militancy and Neutralize Invasion Enforcer-"

"Yes, I am well aware your allegiance to OMNI Enforcer." Kira interrupted. "However, as per the agreement between Morgenroete and the United Emirates of Orb, any officer of Orb's military has the right to, in a time of emergency, assume command over Morgenroete assets and personnel, particularly those of their private security units, such as the Onigumo squadron," He gestured to the mentioned insectoid mobile armors, "And as for how this applies to you, the _Armatura _and the Xiphos are built and owned by Morgenroete, for the moment, and all of you are official Morgenroete employees."

The Ensign snarled, and prepared to rebut that when she stopped and paled.

"What's the problem Natarle?" Murrue frowned, certain that her immediate subordinate had been about to ream Kira out. Natarle recomposed herself, regaining her posture and color before responding.

"In order to maintain the G Project' secrecy and prevent its discovery, all of its assigned materiel and personnel were officially listed as Morgenroete assets." She explained stiffly.

"Damn." Mu snorted, with a shake of his head. "Looks like High Command didn't take a close enough look at the contract."

– The Crucible –

**2,500 Kilometers outside Heliopolis Defense Zone, _Vesalius_, Bridge**

Rau Le Creuset, (in)famous ZAFT ace, leader of the team which bore his name, and current commander over three teams, scanned the room full of ZAFT pilots, all but four of them experienced Green-coats.

"Everyone," He began, "You know about the Earth Alliance mobile suits, and their problems like the OS. However, my sortie into Heliopolis' interior has revealed a new threat," He walked over towards a holo-projector table behind Captain Ades' chair, activating it to show a trio of select still images. A blood-red mobile suit, wielding a katana and a shield, next to a dark blue-and-purple one with two enormous guns, one handheld and the other mounted to the left shoulder, ad the final gray-and-silver unit, holding a carbine and shield, the latter emitting a what looked like a contained beam. "These units are unexpected, and were not detailed in the G Project communications we intercepted. This is because," He tapped a switch, zooming in o the shield of the gray unit, showing the golden Orb sunburst, "They are not G Project units. These three mobile suits appear to be developed by Morgenroete for Orb in tandem with the Earth Alliance's G Project. However, regardless of that fact, they are also targets. We cannot allow any other power to obtain mobile suit technology, and if we cannot capture these new units as well as the remaining G Unit, then we must destroy it, as well as the new Alliance ship." Ades cut in now.

"Barton Team will deploy with standard ordnance, while Messa will be equipped with anti-ship and installation weaponry. Dismissed!" The Green-Coats filed out, heading for their mobile suits that were temporarily docked with the _Vesalius_. The members of Le Creuset Team, meanwhile stayed, studying the images.

"Um...If Messa and Barton teams deploy with anti-installation weapons...what's going to happen to Heliopolis?" Nicole, concerned about the colony, asked.

"Well, it can't really be helped, can it?" Dearka shrugged.

"It serves them right for calling themselves a neutral state when they're pulling this kind of shit." Was Yzak's cold remark.

"Commander! I request permission to deploy with Barton and Messa Teams." Everyone turned to stare at Athrun, who assumed a rigid posture, facing Rau.

"Why? You have no machine." Rau reminded him. "And besides, you've already completed the important objective of capturing that mobile suit. Let some others have a chance at glory."

At that, Athrun just turned aside slightly, biting his tongue.

– The Ace –

_**Armatura**_** Starboard Hanger  
****1119 OST**

"Load those ammunition containers into bays one to five!"

"Use the hanger systems to load up the Xiphos packs! They're gonna be needed for combat use soon!"

"What is this doing here? All ammunition and power packs for the Onigumo are supposed to be in the port hanger!

Before him, Mu witnessed the simultaneously foreign and familiar scene of a hanger in resupply. Familiar, because of the same hustle-and-bustle that always consumed them, technicians and engineers running around, hefting large crates of ammunition, parts and other necessary supplies while others operated machinery that brought in larger and more unwieldy items and stored them away. All with the same, drab, unpainted and cluttered backdrop of a hanger.

Foreign, because the scene was swarming with people in Morgenroete and UEO Forces uniforms instead of OMNI Enforcer fatigues, khakis or overalls. And instead of simple, small bays for Moebius mobile armors, there were comparatively vast, expansive berths for the mobile suits.

At the moment, four of the six berths where occupied, the Xiphos cloistered in one of the two on the starboard bulkhead, while Kishi Team's MS took up both port berths and one of the center ones. On the catwalks surrounding each berth, the mechanics scrambled up and down, bearing ammunition, parts and tools to ensure each unit was fully supplied and at peak performance.

In the center of this tableau was the chief mechanic, a man Mu only knew by the name of Murdock, and the Morgenroete technician, Karen, shouting orders at the barely ordered chaos.

Mu took a moment to study Karen. Hourglass figure, beautiful face that seemed both Caucasian and Asian in a highly exotic manner, a high-ranking technician in the notoriously brainy Morgenroete's employ,_ as well as_ Captain of Heliopolis's Self-Defense Force.

_Quite attractive, on several levels..._

"She's also taken." A wry, familiar voice sounded suddenly, making Mu jump a little, before he turned to find Kira grinning at him.

"Whoa! Sheesh, don't scare me like that kid." The ace said, mocking a heart attack before eyeing Kira speculatively. "So, what's the plan?"

"It's pretty simple. The Onigumo, capable as they are, would take significant losses fighting mobile suits in this environment." Kira explained. "They're made for more conventional opponents, such as heavy armored vehicles and infantry rather than mobile suits, so Kishi team and you in the Xiphos will be serving as the primary opposition to any further ZAFT incursions, while Karen and her Onigumo unit will provide support."

"Seems like a sound plan." Mu commented, wincing slightly when he recalled the average performance of the Earth Alliance's own, less advanced mobile armors against ZAFT's mobile suits.

"Well, it's not really detailed at this point, which is why I'd like you to join my team and the Heliopolis SDF outside after the Xiphos is refitted." Kira said. Mu turned to him, quirking a brow in a questioning manner. "Well, while you're fairly new to MS piloting, you're still the most experienced soldier here, and we're against someone you're highly familiar with..."

"Rau Le Creuset." Mu stated

"Precisely."

"Alright." Mu sighed, "I'll be right out then."

Kira nodded to him before moving to his mobile suit's berth.

– The Prince –

**2,500 Kilometers outside Heliopolis Defense Zone, _Vesalius_ Hanger  
1144 OST**

Out in the space near Heliopolis, the four ZAFT ships were hovering, relatively motionless behind some of the leftover debris from Heliopolis' construction. At the moment, all of them were launching their surviving MS Teams for the upcoming assault on the colony.

The _Vesalius_, in particular, just launched the last of its designated units.

"Barton Team, Santo's unit, move to catapult!" As the bulky GAU drifted into place, the gray, drab unit in its berth to the side started to shift colors, turning a brilliant ruby-red. Finally, the last GAU launched, and the head technician started to call out for the hatch to close when the captured unit began to move.

"Hoy! What's going on? Is that unit moving out too?"

"I don't know! No one told _me!" _

The captured MS moved into the catapult's launch field, shooting down the catapult to join the other mobile suits.

_I'm coming for you Kira._ Athrun thought from his place inside the Aspis.

– The Knight –

_**Armatura**_** Starboard Hanger  
1201 OST**

The panic alarm began to blare, jolting Kira out of his focused checkup on the Takehaya's systems. In a moment, Kira tapped into both the _Armatura's_ comms system as well as Kishi Team's encrypted radio.

"-Approaching from the Earthward entrance! Thermal signatures indicate at least twelve GAUs, two GEL-GOUGs and...the Apsis!" A male voice, presumably the _Armatura's_ sensor officer, blurted out in shock.

"They're already using it in battle!?" A similarly shocked Natarle thought aloud.

Thinking for a moment, Kira spoke.

"Sai, Canard, I want you two to get out there immediately, and try to draw off some of the enemy MS. Sai, there's a large warehouse about fifty meters Sunward that should be large enough to hide the Bishamon when you start sniping. Canard, if you can lead some of them over to the urban center in Sector A9, you can do your guerrilla thing easily enough."

"Awesome! I haven't managed to pull that off since Victoria!" Canard crowed, the Hachiman lurching out of its berth and loping out of the hanger, to the shock of the technicians still on the hanger floor.

"Well, he's as eager as always." Sai noted with amusement. Walking the Bishamon out of its berth and onto the catapult hatch, he simply hopped it off, the blue custom Gunshin falling for the industrial district below.

Kira brought the Takehaya out, easing it into the catapult clamps.

"_Armatura_ Control, this is Kira Yamato in the Takehaya, requesting permission to launch."

"Um...Er.." The comms officer, one of the original Alliance crewmembers, hestitated.

"Permission granted! Lieutenant La Flaga! Take the Xiphos out to assist him! CIC, ready linear cannons and load launchers with AMS ammunition!" Kira tuned out the rest of her barked commands as a shudder in the Takehaya's frame and a green light on the HUD signified the locking of the catapult clamps. Settling the Takehaya into a crouched position, Kira watched the indicators as they flashed green.

A rumble and jerk made the mobile suit shake as the catapult's linear acceleration fields activated, pulling the Takehaya along until it shot out of the _Armatura's_ catapult at a supremely high velocity. Kira allowed a moment for the Takehaya to separate far enough from the warship before activating its thrusters. A bright light blazed out of the primary thruster, smaller and less brilliant jets shooting out of the secondary units, and small pinpricks shone from the tertiary units.

Orienting to face the approaching ZAFT units, Kira watched the approaching enemies. The HUD helpfully tagged each red-lined MS with a range figure, rapidly counting down as they approached. One indicator sped up, indicating the target accelerating. The HUD had labeled that one with the model number of GMS-Y317.

Kira knew it as the Aspis.

The Gundam Athrun had stolen.

Lips pressed into a thin line, Kira turned the Takehaya onto an intercept course.

This was going to be a hard battle.

– The Author –**  
**

**(Hey, all you meatbags out there! Now, as you probably know, this fic, as well as many of Knightmare's other fics, has drastically slowed down in their updating. One might even say they stopped. The reason...is best illustrated by the following, which was recorded a few months ago.)**

Play Recording

Alright folks, I'm finally back...sort of.

I apologize for my...extensive absence from Fanfiction...I was...rather distressed...

What caused me to be distressed? Oh, I'll tell you right now.

Gundam AGE.

And, **SPOILERS**, its goddamn idiotic ending.

You know, I had such high hopes for it in the beginning. Flit out-and-out _shanked _that Gafran in his very first time piloting the AGE-1, and got only better from then on, until I got _chills_ when he smacked Desil Galette down in the AGE-1 Sparrow.

Asemu was almost the same, ass-kicking his way from the AGE-1 to the AGE-2, with some rather understandable emotional issues considering that right after that his best friend-turned-enemy _bitch-slapped him_ in the manner of Full Frontal smacking around a ReZEL. And then, later on, he _eviscerated_ Desil, finishing what Flit started decades ago.

And then..._and then..._Goddamn Kio! I had hopes for the boy, I did. First outing in the AGE-3, and he annihilates a heavy assault MS without much in the way of collateral damage! But nooooo. You know what we got? Another Kira Yamato! Except even _less goddamn effective!_ There are ways to do technical pacifists in combat! Like the Gundam Wing protagonists in Endless Waltz! That was awesome! Why not do it like that instead of all the goddamn whining about 'understanding' and shit!

I mean...it seems like they spent all that time building up everything in Generations 1 and 2...only to tear it all down in 3! And not in the satisfying way either! The entire final arc was a mess! Like that stupid 'Spriggan' character during the lunar battle! What the hell? Dump _another_ new character in, with a whole f cking backstory episode to herself, and kill her off in her third episode? In the LAST arc? The hell? What was that about? If they were trying to muddle up the Federation's image with the whole 'unethical and dangerous X-Rounder testing' background, they already had that with Flit's _aspirations to genocide_! If they wanted to do that, they should have put Spriggan in somewhere in the second generation (probably in with that whole 'colony working as a Vagan factory' arc) and had her become a recurring antagonist!

Which brings me to another point! This series handled its antagonists _horribly! _Desil, for instance, while his send-off was properly karmic and all, could have been held on for so much longer! He was the first antagonist who we actually put a face to! The posterboy for the UE before it became Vagan to the audience! He could have been kept around up to the third generation, whereupon he and Flit would have had their epic final battle! Hell, you could have taken Zanald out and put Desil in his place with virtually _nothing changed!_

And the Magicians Eight! That 'elite' X-Rounders corps introduced in the middle of Generation 2! They were killed off like Gundam Wing Mauve Shirts! Even that guy at the end went out like Otto did! They could have been whittled down to three and put in place of the damn Phantom team! With much better characterization might I add!

Ugh, ultimately, this series has little character continuity within itself, throwing out established characters to make room for new ones for little reason as far as I can tell! Why didn't Largan Drace show up with Woolf and Flit in the second generation? Huh? Where the hell was Arisa in the third generation? HUH!?

And then we come to the point I hate most...the goddamn VILLAIN MOTIVATIONS!

What the FCKING HELL SUNRISE? Do you have some sort of allergy to sensible goals and motivations? I thought this series had promise when Yark Dole extolled Vagan's backstory! Here we had a faction that wanted wanted vengeance for the generations it was stuck on, suffering from sickness caused by intense solar radiation (ignoring that BLATANT MISTAKE with the magnetic field of 'Mars Rays') abandoned by the Federation decades ago, now coming back to inflict destruction on the Earthlings and claim Earth as their Eden!

But Noooooooooo...you had to get Ezelcant, and have his true objective be...wait for it...KILLING OFF MOST OF HUMANITY to make it 'EVOLVE' into a more PEACEFUL ONE...by INSTIGATING A NEARLY GENOCIDAL WAR AGAINST THE EARTH FEDERATION and SABOTAGING YOUR OWN COLONIES.

WHAT. _THE_. _**FUCK!?**_

Wanting a vengeful genocide has a horrible, twisted logic to it given what happened to the Vagan people. But...But...AGH! I can't even say it again!

You know what? Screw it. This is it! The last straw! I'M GONNA-

Stop Recording

**(Well, I think that's enough to get the gist of it, but before I explain further, let me switch to another cut-off, as the bold text will probably get tiring to read.)**

– The Abomination –

What, seriously? That's my title? That little...ah, whatever. Alright, it's me here, K'GoN, and as you can see by the above, the Author, Knightmare had a bit of a...well, let's call it a 'psychotic break'. So, now he's been stuffed into a padded cell with a nice, comfy straightjacket to compliment his newly acquired 'foaming-mouth' demeanor.

Thus, I'll be taking over writing the stories now. Hopefully, away from all this madness that is the internet, Knightmare will be able to recover.

_(Actually, I'd like to interject here.)_

What in the name of Deus Ex Machina? Who are you?

_(I'm not surprised you don't remember me, seeing as you buried me with Killer's Realm.)_

Holy shit! It's Neb! How the hell did you get back here?

_(Well, it involved several bones, a Reaper, and hacking Requiem's transit system, but that's something for another time. Right now, I'd like to address something in your plans for Knightmare's treatment.)_

...Like what?

_(First of all, I believe cutting him off from the internet, this site in particular, would be a grievous error, as my past records of his mental state indicate writing for this site was a great relief to him psychologically.)_

Maybe, but I don't think letting him start another story is a good idea...

_(No, it isn't. However, a smaller form would be adequate. My idea would be to have him resume his place at the keyboard for just long enough to type out a short story, once every few days or weeks.)_

Like a one-shot series then?

_(Perhaps several.)_

Sounds good to me! Now, let's see what he's got here...Naruto crossover ideas...Halo...Mass Effect...God lord, there's like five hundred Gundam ideas here...ooh! Here's a good one!

_(...Avatar? You want his first oneshot to take place on Pandora?)_

Well, yeah.

_(All of his notes one any story ideas involve large amounts of fire, death and destruction, and occasionally the deployment of strategic ordnance.)_

Exactly. What you said basically boils down to stress relief, right? So, we'll let him relieve his stress by letting him write out the most one-sided curbstomps he'll ever write.

_(Like this one, where he introduces a regiment made of nothing but Assault Battlemechs to Pandora? All loaded out with LB 10-X Autocannons and Heavy Flamers?)_

Or this one, where X-COM drops in. Hmm...actually, you might be right.

_(...Really? You're agreeing with me? You, the bloodthirsty abomination?)_

Yeah, these don't have nearly the curbstomp potential as the story he'd intended this for.

_(EXA-DB Gundam? Hmm...Oh. Oh my.)_

Heh, I know, right?

Ah well, we'll add an armored PC to his padded cell, see if he's coherent enough to type legibly and see what happens.

Anyway folks, I'll be picking up Devil of Zero next, but first I gotta work my way through the relevant Zero no Tsukaima chapters...

See ya!

K'GoN, Abomination and your future Mechanical Master!


End file.
